June 2025

Real Clients, Real Stories – Sale of Empower Energy

M&A The Inside Story – What’s it Really Like to Sell a Company – Sale of Empower Energy

Part of our Real Clients, Real Stories Series. In this candid video interview business owner, Ryan McShea, shares his experience of selling Empower Energy – nationwide provider of solar photovoltaic (‘PV’) installations to Good Energy Group PLC.

Ryan McShea recounts his personal journey of selling Empower, which he founded and grew to over £10 million in annual turnover. Speaking with Justin Levine of TheNonExec and M&A solicitor Nick Davies, Steele Raymond, Ryan offers invaluable insights into the emotional and practical aspects of preparing for, navigating and completing a successful business sale.

With a background in electrical engineering, Ryan scaled his company rapidly but ultimately sought a steadier work-life balance and the chance to enjoy more time with his young family. He reflects on the turning point that led him to consider selling, the importance of choosing the right buyer aligned with his moral values and his strong desire to protect staff, customers, and suppliers throughout the process.

Ryan speaks openly about the challenges of due diligence, the intensity of legal scrutiny and the need to maintain business performance while progressing the deal. He highlights the importance of confidentiality, involving only key staff, the uncertainty raised at the staff sale announcement meeting together with their relief later, when the business continued as normal and as expected.

Importantly, he underscores the value of working with a close-knit, experienced advisory team, praising the personal attention and direct communication provided by TheNonExec and Steele Raymond. For Ryan, it wasn’t just about maximising value but about timing, trust and peace of mind.

Now in a new role within the acquiring group, Ryan reflects positively on the outcome. His story is a reassuring, insightful guide for other business owners considering their own exit.

Quick find timeline:

00:00: Personal touch
Ryan explains the value of working with a close-knit advisory team vs a faceless firm.
00:55: Founding and scaling Empower Energy.
Overview of the business journey from startup to £10m+ turnover.
01:49: Why sell?
Seeking stability and balance. Ryan discusses motivations behind exiting, ambition vs lifestyle.
02:39: Deciding to sell.
From being constantly approached to taking one conversation seriously.
03:56: Choosing the right buyer with aligned values.
Why moral compass and cultural fit mattered more than just numbers.
04:27: Worrying about employees, customers, and suppliers.
Concern for how the sale would impact stakeholders.
05:04: Keeping the sale confidential from staff.
How and why Ryan only informed key team members during the process.
06:39: The due diligence and legal process.
Ryan’s experience of the workload and managing stress alongside daily business.
07:48: Any doubts?
“Never!” Ryan’s confidence in his team and advisors to deliver.
08:31: Announcing the sale to staff.
The Monday morning meeting announcement – and how it went.
09:36: Highs, lows, and staying focused.
No dramatic highs or lows, just intense forward momentum.
10:40: Understanding the final payout.
Completion Accounts. Reflections on a process few business owners are familiar with.
11:21: Key tips for sellers.
Get good advice, structure cleanly, and run your business well.
13:16: Advice on choosing advisors.
Why the personal touch and trust were crucial to Ryan’s choice.
14:05: Post-sale life and new role.
Ryan’s transition into a group role and early impressions.
14:47: Overall deal feedback.
Ryan shares his honest take on valuation, expectations & satisfaction.
15:26: Final reflections – a mix of planning and luck

Meet your M&A experts

Nick Davies, Partner | M&A Solicitor, Steele Raymond LLP Solicitors

Nick acts for a wide range of business clients across various sectors, advising on complex corporate transactions including company sales, purchases and mergers. Nick also advises on on mergers, de-mergers and re-organisation.

Justin Levine – Managing Director, TheNonExec M&A Boutique

Justin leads a boutique exit advisory firm specialising in manufacturing, technology, IT, digital, healthcare, wholesale and distribution markets. With the support of a 15-strong virtual team of analysts and researchers, he helps private business owners with growth and exit strategies.

CONTACTS:

TheNonExec Limited
Contact us here to chat about your business exit.

Steele Raymond LLP
Richmond Point, 43 Richmond Hill, Bournemouth, BH2 6LR
steeleraymond.co.uk

Transcript for video:

Real Clients, Real Stories – Sale of Empower Energy

M&A The Inside Story – What’s it Really Like to Sell a Company – Sale of Empower Energy

Introduction: Selling a Solar Photovoltaic (‘PV’) Installations Company but relevant for anybody selling a business

Personal touch
Ryan explains the value of working with a close-knit advisory team vs faceless firm

Ryan Mc Shea:
There was no real middle person there. It was, there’s your line of contact right the way through. Be it Saturday, be it Sunday Steele Raymond and Justin [TheNonExec] and some other advisors and the other people that were close to me in the business. I had a fantastic team around me. It’s the personal touch that was really, really important you know, rather than a huge faceless company. You’re just a number.

Justin Levine:
Ryan, welcome. Thanks for being here. So you built a very nice company, Empower Energy, which we sold to Good Energy PLC. The exercise of the video is we’re trying to unpick a little bit; the experience of selling the company, what you thought of the process, some of the emotional highs, some of the emotional lows, and it’s really just to inform others that are potentially selling the company. Could you just give me an overview of the business that you built up and maybe what the company did, where it started and how big it was when you sold it?

Founding & scaling Empower Energy
Business journey from startup to £10m+ turnover

Ryan McShea:
Yeah, no, absolutely. So I mean I’m an electrical engineer by background and prior to Empower Energy had Empower Electrical and then in 2010 as solar was, the feeding tariffs were kicking off in the UK set up Empower Energy, and it was literally 2010-11 was when it sort of, ‘BOOM!’, the feeding tariff went mad and it seemed like good options and yeah, by the time I met you, I mean we were turning over in excess of £10 million a year. It was a great business, but just, I fancied perhaps something a little bit steadier without the constant highs and lows and employing as many people as were up to.

Why sell? Seeking stability and balance
Ryan discusses motivations behind exiting, ambition vs lifestyle

Nick Davies:
Was that the main driving factor then in terms of your kind of decision making of what you wanted the future to be, was to smooth that out for you personally, you wanted a steadier life?

Ryan McShea:
I think I’ve always been very ambitious and I doubled the company size a number of times over the years. The next logical step was to double it in size. Again, my personal appetite for that thinking of having doubled the amount of staff wasn’t necessarily where I saw myself. And if I’m honest, it’s like I still had that ambition. I still wanted to get twice as big, but perhaps without quite the level of responsibility of employing everyone and having 40 people’s mortgages hanging around my neck every month.

The moment Ryan decided to sell
From being constantly approached to taking one conversation seriously

Justin Levine:
There’s obviously a time where you said right now is the time to sell. So perhaps you could just talk us through from that moment of saying, right, I think I want to sell. How did that from your side sit in terms of saying, how do you make this happen? How do you sell the company?

Ryan McShea:
I think, and this is probably not uncommon for a lot of business owners, I constantly always got solicited by lots and lots of people talking about do you want to sell your business? I’d never ever really seriously considered it at all. I think there were a number of things that happened with particular employees where I was far too close to everyone in the business and then imagining that on the next level with double the amount of staff and all the rest of it, I was like, is this something I really want to do? I think there’s a degree of work takes up too big a part of your life. I wanted to be happy. So that was really important to me. I’ve got a fairly young family, so they were getting older and I wanted them to be able to enjoy the fruits of my labour and not constantly be working away and not seeing them. And so then one of the companies that solicited to me, I thought, well, it’s worth a chat. So I had a chat, it opened my eyes to the possibility that this could be possible.

Choosing the right buyer with aligned values
Why moral compass and cultural fit mattered more than just numbers

Justin Levine:
So, we engaged and of course Steele Raymond were part of that mix from a legal point of view, you’ll have thought about the right buyer for a business like yours, I guess. You’ll have thought, well if I want someone to buy my business, who’s it going to be? Did you have an idea by who that general shape that company would be?

Ryan McShea:
There’s things like morals and things like that in business that are very, very important to me. So that was important. I wanted to be in a business that I’m happy to work with and be with people that I like, and I think a moral compass is correct.

Worrying about employees, customers, and suppliers
Concern for how the sale would impact stakeholders

Nick Davies:
Did you worry about employees, customers, suppliers, relationships you’ve built up over the 10 years more? Did you worry about how they would react to the idea that the business was going to be sold and what the future might hold?

Ryan McShea:
I think to be honest, they were a very big part of me making my decisions. So I took into account all of them and their future and where I thought they’d be best placed as well as myself. It was certainly a consideration to make sure that everyone was looked after post the transaction.

Keeping the sale confidential from staff
How and why Ryan only informed key team members during the process

Justin Levine:
Apart from just one or two key management in the business, you chose not to inform the employees about the process. Was that a concern for you that they would, if you’d let them know about the fact that you intended to sell the company? There was obviously some concern there from your side.

Ryan McShea:
I think being realistic, it’s very easy for people to get the wrong end of the stick and not really understand what it means or what it entails. So I certainly wouldn’t advise going to the level of telling everyone if I go back to the Monday where I did tell everyone there were lots and lots of questions and then probably a little bit of surprise a week later when everything was still exactly as it was. So it was pleasant for them to see it was all exactly as it was. But if I’d done that through the process then it may have created all sorts of uncertainty that I wouldn’t advise. I certainly would advise involving those that are really close to you because it made me even closer to those key members of staff and we’re still very, very close now and I’ve seen it with funnily enough other business that didn’t do that and I think it can be quite damaging not to involve those that are really close to you that you want to stay working with or stay close to.

The due diligence and legal process
Ryan’s experience of the workload and managing stress alongside daily business

Nick Davies:
How did you find the legal process when that started in terms of due diligence and inquiries and all that sort of stuff? And I can see you starting to smile there because quite an intense process. There’s a lot of questions there, but how was it for you? I know you are very active, busy running the business, you’re at the frontline in terms of sales and everything else. What was the time management and just talk me through that.

Ryan McShea:
I mean, I can’t say I wasn’t warned by Justin very early in the process. I think in the big scheme of things, we were lucky we decided to go to a deadline, which I think was one of the benefits. Initially it seemed like it would be impossible, but that’s what I do for a living is impossible. So I was like, right, we’ve got something to aim for, which was great. Let’s work hard towards this. The bar is very accommodating, very reasonable, and they’d literally just undertaken some other acquisitions very recently. So I think they were fairly well honed with having a lot of the things prepared ready. And to be honest, I had a fantastic team around me. Everyone pulled out all the stops and you guys, Steele Raymond and Justin [THeNonExec] and some other advisors and the other people that were close to me in the business to make sure everything kept flowing as quickly as it could.

Never any doubts
Ryan’s confidence in his team and advisors to deliver

Nick Davies:
Were there any points or doubts in the process where you thought we’re either not going to hit the deadline or the deal’s going to fail for some other reason?

Ryan McShea:
Never.

Nick Davies:
Never. That’s good to hear.

Ryan McShea:
It was one of those. To be honest, over my career, there’s many, many times I’ve gone into things where people have told me it’s impossible and that’s something I get something out of. I’m not going to pretend, if it hadn’t been for the team around me then I wouldn’t have had the faith I had. But everyone was very committed to doing it with me. I mean the actual final day was on a Sunday, so everyone was working all weekend and I mean I think finally everything was set up at nine o’clock on Sunday night, but we all worked to get that done.

Announcing the sale to staff
The Monday morning meeting announcement – and how it went

Nick Davies:
What were the emotions like on the day of completion? It was that Sunday, what was it like on the Monday?

Ryan McShea:
I was set to announce to all the staff at seven o’clock on the Monday morning. So we’d hired a local pub hotel just to gather everyone a bacon sarnie and a coffee, everyone obviously wondering what on earth they’re being called into at seven o’clock on a Monday morning. But that was as when it could be announced to the market. So I was very keen to make sure no one heard from a third party. They heard from me first. It was a lot for them to take in on the whole, it went down very well. So I was reassured by that. I was hoping it would be like that anyway, obviously some extra questions from some people but it went down pretty well. And then the actual completion exchange happened on the Tuesday and if I’m honest, I suppose I always imagine, I dunno, being in your office or something till 10 o’clock at night signing documents and it’s all done on DocuSign and very uneventful at the end of it.

Highs, lows, and staying focused
No dramatic highs or lows, just intense forward momentum

Justin Levine:
And what about the highs and the lows? Because there must’ve been a point in that process where there was a high point that you remember and going, yeah, that was good. Maybe it was the end of the deal, maybe it was something else.

Ryan McShea:
It certainly was stressful because ultimately it was important to keep my commitment as I always have done with the business because I wanted to make sure that it was flying as well as it could be. And it wasn’t really a position where I could take my foot off the throttle with that, to be honest, we all went through so fast. There weren’t any particular highs or lows. It was just in the thick of it getting on with it.

Understanding the final payout – Completion Accounts
Reflections on a process few business owners are familiar with

Justin Levine:
I remember one element of it myself from my side, which was the, it’s not unusual, it sort of comes up pretty much with every time we sell a company is the notion of how much you get at the end. Of course everybody’s selling a company so it wants to know what’s the pounds, shillings and pence. And of course if you’re using, and you might remember the terminology, a completion accounts process, which is what you used is, it’s a moving target. The number moves. And I think I remember having discussions with you around that and it still is from my side enormously complicated to explain to anybody. It really is because no business owner is aware of that process. But how did you feel about it from your side?

Ryan McShea:
I think as you’d said to me very, very early in the process, Justin, if you want to give me two years, I can make this absolute prime for the absolute best you could possibly get out of it. But timing was a big importance to me and one thing I came to terms with was it was the right time and it was the right thing. And even if there were a couple of things, perhaps I could have got a bit more, it was the right time and deal for me, so I was happy.

Key tips for sellers
Get good advice, structure cleanly, and run your business well

Nick Davies:
You only learn what you learn when you actually get into the process and I suppose two years before the process you don’t know what it’s going to involve or what you’re going to have to do. Is there anything you’ve learned in the process that you would advise others facing the process?

Ryan McShea:
I think if I’m honest, if I look at it inadvertently, I had done a fairly good job of where it was at. The silly little things like I say, where there’s parts things in the business that didn’t need to be there that didn’t ultimately affect the bottom line value could have been taken out. I could have perhaps set up things like property slightly better without it being in the company name and stuff. It’s all a balancing act between how profitable you’re going to look and the multiple it’s going to give you and all the rest of it. But like I said, I think in the big scheme of things, I was happy overall in the end and I think that’s very, very important that you find that in your heart of hearts when you’ve done all that, you’re at peace and move on.

Justin Levine:
So if somebody was starting, if there was somebody listening to us that owns their own company and is thinking of selling, if you were to sort of give them one or two, let’s say top tips if you like to saying this is what you should do, what would it be?

Ryan McShea:
Certainly structure, things that don’t need to be in the business, so perhaps they’re out of them in good time. Seek good financial advice. That was certainly something that I found invaluable as well. I had a good tax advice from good accountants and they could sort of advise as well with preparing things and how things can best look and at the end of the day, just do what you do well and make the business as successful as it can be.

Choosing advisors
Why the personal touch and trust were crucial to Ryan’s choice

Justin Levine:
A slightly sort of off piste question, and it’s hopefully not a leading question, we obviously had a successful experience, both Steele Raymond and ourselves [TheNonExec] guiding the business, but if you are advising other companies and selecting advisors to work with lawyers, M&A people, whatever, what would you say to them? Would you say pitch high, spend the most amount of money that you can spend and get the best of the best of the best? Do it cheap? Do it without?

Ryan McShea:
I think it’s the personal touch and that’s very much how I’ve always been with what I respect in business and who I choose to do business with at the end of the day. Justin, it was always, and that was how you spoke to me when I first spoke to you, it’s me that’s going to deal this with you. You’ve got all of your researchers and stuff around you and other people to assist you, but I like that being able to pick up the phone. Exactly the same with Shaun Guppy. There was no real middle person there. But ultimately, yeah, it is the personal touch that was really, really important. And having those rather than a huge faceless companies that you’re just a number.

Post-sale life and new role
Ryan’s transition into a group role and early impressions

Nick Davies:
What’s life been like for you post completion? I mean, when was closing? It was about eight months ago?

Ryan McShea:
So I’ve taken on a new role business development director for the group we’ve recruited now there’s a new MD, so I’ve got a boss for the first time and it’s going well. There’s a lot of change going on at the moment as we’re trying to amalgamate everything together, but it’s certainly lots for me to get my teeth into, which is what I enjoy.

Overall deal feedback
Ryan shares his honest take on valuation, expectations & satisfaction

Justin Levine:
If you look back, we set out on a mission, you gave me a specific target, the goal was to achieve an exit. And if you look back at, and there’s a degree of luck involved with this, and I’m not looking for too many specifics, but broadly speaking, with the ownership structure that you have now and what you’re doing now, did it pretty much hit the mark for you?

Ryan McShea:
It did, yeah. I suppose in my early, very naive days of just pen in the air, I perhaps imagined slightly higher, but to be fair, in the end it hit exactly where I wanted it to. And the one bit that perhaps I could have changed, I understood why I didn’t, but I’m very happy overall and to be honest, an added bonus is the shares that I had have now increased in value as well. So I think all in all it was the right move.

Justin Levine:
Serendipity, they call it, Luck!

Ryan McShea:
Yeah, something like that.

Justin Levine:
A little of a luck and good fortune.

Nick Davies:
Fantastic.

Justin Levine:
Ryan, thank you so much.

Nick Davies:
Appreciate your time.

Tags: company, company sale, DD, due diligence, Empower Energy, energy, exit, Good Energy PLC., Inside Story, Installation, M&A, mergers and acquisitions, Nick Davies, Photovoltaic, PV, renewables, Ryan McShea, sell, solar, Steele Raymond